[was_hellbanned]

The most common justification I hear about the open floor plan is that it "encourages collaboration".

In my experience, the sort of people who talk about open floor plans for "collaboration" tend to be incompetent managers. Instead of managing, leading, and making decisions, they believe that by manipulating some imaginary rate of collaboration, workers will "collaborate" their way to generating value and wealth. It's a managerial form of cargo cult behavior.

Personally, my best years have been in a shared office with someone whose presence I genuinely enjoyed. It was less about collaboration and more about keeping the mood up throughout the inevitable daily slog through painful work that, truthfully, nobody wants to do.